Recently updated blogs

I just realized that I hadn’t posted this. Several months ago, I read about whisper.cpp and started playing with it. To quote from their docs, whisper.cpp is a High-performance inference of OpenAI’s Whisper automatic speech recognition (ASR) model: Plain C/C++ implementation without dependencies Apple Silicon first-class citizen – optimized via ARM NEON, Accelerate framework, Metal and Core ML https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp In other words, a fast and free speech transcription app that …

.NET Blazor has been touted as a revolutionary framework that allows .NET developers to build interactive web applications using C# instead of JavaScript. It's mainly aimed at ASP.NET Core developers who want to build SPA-like apps leveraging the .NET ecosystem and a wealth of existing libraries and tools available via NuGet. It's Microsoft's latest instalment in an attempt to gain traction amongst frontend developers. With the recent release of .NET …

Years ago I wrote about my trouble with a job queue in Postgres, in which table bloat caused by long-running queries slowed down the workers’ capacity to lock jobs as they hunted across millions of dead tuples trying to find a live one. A job queue in a database can have sharp edges, but I’d understated in that writeup the benefits that came with it. When used well, transactions and …

CSS today has advanced features that make browsers powerful, our work easier and JavaScript dependency minimal. Here is a list of some of my favourite new CSS features, including masks, container queries, and parent selector. The post Modern CSS appeared first on tourist wannabe.

The other day, I was thinking about less-obvious skills that I find helpful for working as a software engineer. Some skills are obvious, like understanding technical topics, learning new things, and thinking like a computer, but there’s a separate class of unobvious skills that an outsider may not immediately think of when they imagine a career in software.1 Empathy and communication are the main ones that come to mind.2 3 …

The people afraid to show their peers or bosses my technical writing because it also contains furry art are some of the dumbest cowards in technology. Considering the recent events at ApeFest, a competitive level of stupidity is quite impressive. To be clear, the exhibited stupidity in question is their tendency to project their own sexual connotations onto furry art–even if said art isn’t sexual in nature in any meaningful …

Every so often, somebody makes a bot account in the fediverse, expects people to love it, and is then surprised when people get mad. If you are thinking of writing or hosting a bot account on Mastodon, Pleroma or other fediverse software, here are some tips that will make it less likely that a server admin will ban your bot and yell at you. 1. Identify your bot as a …

Paul Linebarger (aka Cordwainer Smith) was an interesting guy. Among other things he was heavily involved in developing psychological warfare techniques for the US military. He was also a close adviser to Chiang Kai-shek and the godson of Sun Yat-sen, the first leader of the Kuomintang (Wikipedia) The table Pinlighting is a hell of a way to earn a living. Underhill was furious as he closed the door behind himself. …

Like many parents, I have a kid that loves playing games on his tablet. He's gone through several iPads over the years. One tablet has managed to survive his rough-and-tumble lifestyle, and it's a budget-friendly option from Amazon. The Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro has proven itself as a perfect match for a rambunctious youth. The Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro offers a blend of durability, parental control, …

The weekend markets live-ish and direct in my hand A few years ago, I ended up spending 9 months living in South Gippsland, about two hours from Melbourne. We were doing a renovation on our house and had wonderful builders who took care of everything, so we left town for 9 months and left them to it. It was mid-Pandemic, too, so that provided a bit of extra incentive. My …

It's time to bring the curtain down on Stats, Maps n Pix now, after 1.5 million page views and 150 posts. I'll leave the blog archived here, but if you're looking for me, you can always find me via my business website. When I started this blog as a replacement for my original one I was still working at a university doing academic stuff and it kind of fitted in …

The first "pyutrecht" meetup in Amersfoort in the Netherlands. (Amersfoort is not the city of Utrecht, but it is in the similarly named province of Utrecht). I gave a talk myself about being more of a proper programmer to your own laptop setup. Have a git repo with a README explaining which programs you installed. An install script or makefile for installing certain tools. "Dotfiles" for storing your config in …

Good morning, I’ve been thinking about the “Goldilocks principle” lately. You know, how the correct amount of something is great for you, but too little or too much does nothing, or even ends up hurting you. Like how ten minutes in the sun can be rejuvenating. Ten hours, however, can leave you burned. Everything in life has a correct dosage. But that dosage is not the same for every individual, …

I guess this does. We’ve been in the house two days. Moving took all of one. There’s something subtly different in the new place. Kind of a relaxed vibe. I really did this whole thing for my wife. Where I live has not mattered for awhile to me although the last house resulted in lots of lost sleep. What I wanted was to give a change to my wife. Let …

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be playing at Bristol Beacon’s Housewarming party! It’s the venue’s reopening celebration after yonks being closed for refurbishments. The event is FREE (but you need tickets) all day from 11am - 2am on 2nd december, 2023. I’ll be performing at MIDNIGHT which is way past my bedtime these days so please come with all your energy so I can feast on your vybezzz and …